For a “Yes”
Vote in Venezuela’s
Dec. 2 Referendum

byGeorge Saunders

Celia Hart has made it clear in her
article, “Bolivarians, You Have a World to Defend”
(posted elsewhere on this web site), why she thinks a “yes” vote on Dec. 2,
2007, will be a further step toward socialist revolution in Venezuela. I tend
to agree with her. Information giving support to that position may be found in
an article by three Trotskyists in Venezuela (see “Chávez
threatens to destroy the bourgeoisie,” by Euler Calzadilla,
Wanderci Silva Bueno, and Darrall Cozens in Caracas,
Monday, Nov. 26 http://www.marxist.com/Chávez-threat-destroy-bourgeoisie261107.htm)

An article by James Petras, posted Nov. 28 on the CounterPunch
web site, gives further support to
the position for a “yes” vote.Petras’s article is
entitled “CIA Venezuela
Destabilization Memo Surfaces.” To read it, go to: <http://www.counterpunch.com >, Nov. 28, 2007.

The following passages from Petras’s article are, to me, particularly persuasive that the call for a “yes” vote has
class-struggle and revolutionary implications:

“In a speech to pro-Chávez, pro-amendment nationalist business-people
(Entrepreneurs for Venezuela
— EMPREVEN) Chávez warned the President of
FEDECAMARAS [the main anti-Chávez businessmen’s
association] that if he continues to threaten the government with a coup, he
would nationalize all their business affiliates[emphasis added). With the exception of … [some political] sects, the vast majority of organized workers,
peasants, small farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal self-employed,
and public school students have mobilized and demonstrated in favor of the
constitutional amendments.

“The reason for the popular
majority is found in a few of the key amendments: One article expedites land
expropriation facilitating re-distribution to the landless and small producers.
Chávez has already settled over 150,000 landless
workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides universal social
security coverage for the entire informal sector (street sellers, domestic
workers, self-employed) amounting to 40 percent of the labor force. Organized
and unorganized workers' workweek will be reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday
to Friday noon) with no reduction in pay [emphasis added]. Open
admission and universal free higher education will open greater educational
opportunities for lower class students. Amendments will allow the government to
bypass current bureaucratic blockage of the socialization of strategic
industries, thus creating greater employment and lower utility costs. Most
important, an amendment will increase the power and budget of neighborhood
councils to legislate and invest in their communities.

“The electorate supporting the
constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their socio-economic
and class interests; the issue of extended reelection of the President is not
high on their [list of] priorities: [Yet] that is the issue the Right has
focused on in calling Chávez a ‘dictator’ and the
referendum a ‘coup.’”

Aside from these positive passages in Petras’s article, however, he also gives an incorrect
impression on one aspect of the situation in Venezuela. He asserts that some
Maoists and Trotskyists are calling for a “no” vote.
This may be true of some, especially of some ex-Maoists and ex-Trotskysits, but most of the significant currents that call
themselves Trotskyist are calling for a “yes” vote, such as Celia Hart and the Trotskyists
mentioned above.

Petras cannot be unaware that such Trotskyist figures
as Celia Hart and Alan Woods have been campaigning in Venezuela and
internationally for the “yes” vote and against Chávez’s
former ally, Gen. RaúlBaduel,
who is calling for a “no” vote, and Baduel’s ally,
the German-Mexican professor and sometime Chávez
adviser Heinz Dieterich.

(See the five articles by Celia Hart and Alan Woods against Baduel and Dieterich on the web
site <http://www.marxist.com>.
Celia’s articles also appeared on the Madrid-based web site www.rebelion.org,
where Petras’s articles often appear in Spanish as
well, and the Venezuelan web site www.aporrea.org.)

On Nov. 28, Celia Hart posted another long article (in Spanish only)
campaigning for a “yes” vote and, among other things, denouncing the king of Spain
for saying to Chávez, “Why don’t you shut up?” (Porque no te
callas?). This incident occurred at the recent Ibero-American
summit, held in Chile,
and in retrospect appears to be part of an international campaign in the major
capitalist countries and in the capitalist-owned media to discredit Chávez and lay the groundwork for another coup attempt
against him, like the one that the Venezuelan masses mobilized to defeat in
April 2002.

In the Venezuelan union movement, there are numerous different left
factions, often in rivalry with one another, as can be seen from the article
mentioned above titled “Chávez threatens to
destroy the bourgeoisie.”

One wing of the generally pro-Chávez labor federation (the UNT) is led by Stalin Peres Borges, who is also a leader of the (Trotskyist) Party of Revolution and Socialism. This Trotskyist component of the organized workers’ movement has
taken a position ofparticipation in and active support to the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish initials, PSUV), and the PSUV calls for a
“yes” vote in the Dec. 2 referendum, as do most groups on the revolutionary
left in Venezuela and internationally. A minor exception is represented by a
splinter group in the UNT led by Orlando Chirino.

An example of the
position taken by most Trotskyists can be seen in a
recent article on the International Viewpoint web site, which is sponsored by
the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the mainstream organization
of Trotskyism internationally. This article makes clear that the battle for the
“yes” vote is part of the class struggle inVenezuelatoday, while the “no” vote is supported by
imperialism and its allies among the Venezuelan capitalist class. (See “Venezuelaat the crossroads: International media prepare a coup,” by Guillermo Almeyra at http://www.internationalviewpoint.org.)

Thus, Petras’s blanket statement, at one point in
his article, that “the Trotskyists” are calling for a
“no” vote is factually way off, and Petras
must undoubtedly be aware of that, since he is a well-informed ex-professor of
Latin American studies with many years of acquaintance with the world Trotskyist movement. The only question is, Why did he choose to make this undiscriminating assertion at
this particular time? Petras has shown that he is capable
of taking very strange, even inexplicable positions. Recently he advocated that
Cuba should use its fallow
land to grow sugarcane for biofuels—at exactly a time
when Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, in alliance with Venezuela’s
Hugo Chávez, has been campaigning againstthe
use of food crops for biofuel. When it comes to Petras, it seems, you can expect good information and good
positions mixed with outlandish ones.

To make it very clear, the fact is that—regardless of Petras’s
wild assertions—most revolutionaries, and that means most Trotskyists,
are with the majority of exploited and oppressed Venezuelan workers, peasants,
students, and the urban and rural poor, calling for a “yes” vote on Dec. 2 and
for the further advance of socialist revolution in Venezuela, Latin America,
and the world.